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Take Net Neutrality Regulations off the Table for Good
Congress should eliminate the looming threat of net neutrality regulations to Internet service providers (ISPs). Regulation deters investment and the coronavirus health crisis has revealed…
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America Last
The Jones Act requires any ship traveling between two U.S. points to be U.S.-manufactured, -owned, -flagged, and -crewed. This heavy-handed protectionist measure was enacted in 1920…
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End All National Institutes of Health Grants to the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer
As the Trump administration considers defunding the World Health Organization (WHO) because of its handling of the COVID-19 crisis, it should also make sure that…
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Perverse Psychology
Cigarette smoking is a lethal habit that kills approximately half of those who sustain it over their lifetime. But, contrary to popular belief, the nicotine…
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Government-Run Payment Systems Are Unsafe at Any Speed
For people quarantining during the COVID-19 health crisis, electronic payments proved essential to obtaining needed supplies, from groceries to medicines, while maintaining social distancing and…
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Lift #NeverNeeded Plastics Regulations and Bans – Permanently
Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, lawmakers have finally begun considering the unintended impacts of bans on single-use plastics, particularly the potential for disease transmission from…
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The Case against Social Media Content Regulation
As repeatedly noted by most defenders of free speech, expressing popular opinions never needs protection. Rather, it is the commitment to protecting dissident expression that…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2020 – Executive Summary
Download the Executive Summary as a PDF Spending control and deficit restraint are indispensable to a nation’s stability and long-term economic health. Yet alarm…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2020
Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the size, scope, and cost of federal regulations, and how they affect American consumers,…
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Deploy Rational Science-Based Policies for Medical Plant Sterilization
Several medical supply sterilization plants have shut down during the past year because of unwarranted fearmongering about ethylene oxide (EtO), a gas used to sterilize…
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Lift #NeverNeeded Regulations that Make Energy More Expensive
Low-income households, which are more likely to suffer from unemployment and other stresses during the COVID-19 crisis, spend much more of their household budget on…
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Pen, Phone, and Eraser?
There have now been several layers of congressional rescue-and-stimulus response to the coronavirus crisis, and there will be more “phases” to come. Given partisan discord,…
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Narrow the Focus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may well have taken their eye off the ball by…
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Profiles in Capitalism: The Role of the Business Leader in Public Affairs and Philanthropy
When Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) President Kent Lassman sat down to interview Ariel Corporation CEO Karen Wright at the CEI Summit in New Orleans in…
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The Scientific Case for Vacating the EPA’s Carbon Dioxide Endangerment Finding
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2009 “Endangerment Finding” from carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases grants the agency a legal mandate that can…
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How Repeal of #NeverNeeded Regulations Can Help Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis
A number of factors are combining to stress the American economy in the spring of 2020—the global and domestic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, an…
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How Federal Policy Puts Eating Disorder Sufferers at Risk
Around 8 million Americans suffer from clinically significant eating disorders that drive them to develop and maintain unhealthy, and sometimes fatal, eating habits. The American…
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What the Green New Deal Could Cost a Typical Household
In early 2019, a handful of progressive Democrats galvanized their party around a set of proposals that, even if only partially implemented, would radically restructure…
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CEI Letter Following HAV E&C hearing
On behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), thank you for holding the hearing today, “Autonomous Vehicles: Promises and Challenges of Evolving Automotive Technologies.” We…
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Federal Health Agencies’ Misleading Messaging on E-Cigarettes Threatens Public Health
The scientific community is increasingly unified in the assessment that e-cigarettes are vastly safer than smoking, help smokers quit, and are a net positive for…
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The American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act: Myth vs. Fact
Beginning in the 1970s, concerns that the refrigerants used in most air conditioners and refrigerators were leaking into the air and depleting the Earth’s ozone…
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CEI Achievement Report 2019
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California Ride Share Contracting Legislation Is a Solution in Search of a Problem
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5 (A.B. 5) into law on September 18, 2019.[1] The legislation, which generally takes effect…
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Union Time on the Taxpayer Dime
“Forcing free and independent individuals to endorse ideas they find objectionable is always demeaning,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion in Janus v…
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The Push to Raise the Legal Age to Buy Tobacco to 21 Has Little Basis in Fact
The notion that raising the tobacco purchasing age to 21 helps reduce adolescent smoking seems plausible enough. But there is little evidence in support of…
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Federally Funded Children’s Environmental Health Centers Do Little to Promote Public Health
October is Children’s Health Month, a time when official federal agencies call attention to important efforts and policies designed to advance childhood health and safety.
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Democratic Capitalism: Why Political and Economic Freedom Need Each Other
Is capitalism destroying democracy? It is an old question that political thinkers have long wrestled with.
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Selling Your Data without Selling Your Soul
Humans have always sought to defend a zone of privacy around themselves—to protect their personal information, their intimate actions and relationships, and their thoughts and…
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Minimum Wages Have Tradeoffs
Raising the minimum wage is currently a top policy issue at the federal, state, and local levels. This paper opposes increases for three reasons, and…
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How the Ex-Im Bank Enables Cronyism and Wastes Taxpayer Money
The U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) is a federal agency that seeks to boost exports by private U.S. businesses. It pursues its mission through loan guarantees,…
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The Case against the Protecting the Right to Organize Act
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2019 (H.R. 2474) would radically overhaul United States labor relations law to facilitate labor union organizing without…
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Modernizing the Passenger Facility Charge to Increase Airport Investment, Reduce Federal Spending, and Save Travelers Money
The passenger facility charge (PFC) is a congressionally authorized, federally regulated local airport user fee. The PFC exists alongside the Airport Improvement Program (AIP), a…
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What the Green New Deal Could Cost a Typical Household
In early 2019, a handful of progressive Democrats galvanized their party around a set of ideas that—even if only partially implemented—would restructure vast areas of…
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What the Green New Deal Could Cost a Typical Family
In early 2019, a handful of progressive Democrats galvanized their party around a set of ideas that—even if only partially implemented—would restructure vast areas of…
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Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning, 2019 Edition
Automated vehicles have captured the public’s imagination in recent years following successful on-road demonstrations by developers such as Waymo (its parent company, Alphabet, also owns…
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A Citizen’s Guide to Climate Change
Climate change is not a hoax, but as a political matter, it is a persistent pretext for expanding government control over the economy, redistributing wealth,…
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Transforming Surface Transportation Reauthorization
The United States Interstate Highway System serves as the backbone of American commerce and personal travel. Funded as a pay-as-you-go basis largely through federal excise…
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A Policy Maker’s Guide to Climate Change
Thanks to the ingenuity of U.S. businesses, but also to the Republican rollback of the prior administration’s anti-energy policies, America is positioned to be a…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2019
Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the size, scope, and cost of federal regulations, and how they affect American consumers,…
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The Case against Antitrust Law
Politicians and pundits across the ideological spectrum often call for greater competition in the marketplace. While their favored means vary widely, the view that current…
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Cryptocurrency and the SEC’s Limitless Power Grab
Many questions are being asked about cryptocurrency. Is it a major innovation that will improve standards of living in ways we cannot yet imagine? Or…
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Anti-E-Cigarette Puritans Put Lives at Risk
Big tobacco companies were publicly pilloried when they were found to have misled the public about the dangers of their products. To this day, that…
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EPA’s Flawed IRIS Program Is Far from Gold Standard
Environmental activists claim that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) represents the gold standard for risk assessment.[i] In…
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CEI Achievement Report 2018
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Free to Prosper
CEI’s Agenda for the 116th Congress highlights specific steps lawmakers can take to rein in unlawful overreach by executive agencies, reduce the costs of federal regulations,…
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Antitrust FAQ
1. What is antitrust? Today’s body of antitrust laws is the culmination of over one hundred years of unclear objectives, contradictory interpretations, and controversial court decisions.
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Fear Profiteers
The rise of a vibrant market for e-cigarettes has been a blessing for many smokers. After many failed attempts to quit, e-cigarettes provide an exciting…
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How Antitrust Regulation Hinders Innovation and Competition
Few economic concepts elicit such strong reactions as that of monopoly, and the policy intended to address it—antitrust regulations (called competition policy in the European…
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Will the Trump Fuel Economy Reform Proposal Create Deadly Air Pollution?
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have proposed to partially roll back the corporate average fuel economy…
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A Partial Eclipse of the Administrative State
Deterioration of checks and balances via regulatory overreach and over-delegation by Congress to agencies are central to most modern critiques of the administrative state. Less…